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[personal profile] full_metal_ox
(Warning for self-harm and attempted suicide mention.)

I’m recalling an account (nonfiction; I can’t recall whether it was a memoir , a magazine article, or a cookbook) in which the author recounts visiting a genteel (Southern U.S., I seem to recall) older lady who used to fix them carrots and onions braised in orange juice; she ate only fruits and vegetables, believing such foods to be cleaner than grains and animal products. Her dietary choices also had to do with a paranoid-schizophrenic idea that people were trying to poison her; she’d never had children, owing to abdominal damage sustained during a suicide attempt.

This would’ve been in the 70’s or 80’s. Since similar recipes are commonplace, the recipe per se isn’t what I’m looking for; it’s the context that’s creating a nagging itch in the brain.
full_metal_ox: A gold Chinese Metal Ox zodiac charm. (Default)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox
I encountered these quotes in Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons (Little, Brown and Company, 1996), by Nava Atlas; the problem is that I haven’t the book ready to hand, and it’s no longer in any of my local library systems.

The first quote came from a nineteenth-century (French? British? I want to say De Tocqueville or Brillat-Savarin) author who’d visited the U.S. and found an epiphany in gumbo: they proceeded to eulogize it as the perfect food, combining vibrant flavors and being soup and vegetable and entree in one.

The second was by a Victorian or Edwardian British author, extolling celery, in its cold clear no-nonsense crispness, as the gustatory expression of autumn. (These quotes embellished recipes for a gumbo and a celery soup, respectively; Atlas’ cookbook had something of a literary and reflective tone.)

ETA: [personal profile] wolfinthewood has identified the celery quote, from the essay “A Word for Autumn” in Not that it matters (1919) by A.A. Milne; [profile] kineticatrue has tracked the gumbo quote to Will H. Coleman’s Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans and Environs (1885), p 91.

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